Heavy Music Collective Wants to Fix Music Royalties — and Metallica Are Buying In
A new service for artists backed by the biggest metal band on the planet just launched and it’s loping to make securing and protecting royalties easier for those involved. Dubbed the Heavy Music Collective, the organization is a new division of Word Collections that’s aimed at helping heavy music artists ensure they’re getting paid everything they’re owed.
Created by Converge and Mutoid Man drummer Ben Koller and royalty expert and educator Dan Hegarty, the Heavy Music Collective was backed by Metallica‘s Black Squirrel Partners as the new company’s lead investor in 2023. Since then, the service has already signed a number of artists in its short existence: Metallica, Baroness, Converge, The Offspring, Greta Van Fleet, and Yngwie Malmsteen, for example.
In an Instagram reel (as transcribed by The PRP), Koller explained exactly what Heavy Music Collective is, how it can help artists ensure they’re getting paid fairly, and how laws in different regions have made it hard for artists to get everything they’re owed.
“This law created an agency called the MLC, the Mechanical Licensing Collective. When you put your song on Spotify, it has two royalty halves. One is the sound recording, one is the musical composition.
“The musical composition generates a mechanical royalty. Spotify and Apple Music, and everybody else has to pay that money to the mechanical licensing collective. Once it’s there, it’s your job to go and find it and fill out all the paperwork and claim the money that’s rightfully yours.
“But guess what? If you don’t claim that money in three years, they are legally allowed to take it all back and give it to the major music publishers. So, with the Heavy Music Collective, it’s our job to find all that money that’s rightfully yours and get it before they do.
“But hey guess what? That’s only in the United States. If your music streams in England, France, Australia, Japan — you get mechanical royalties there too. But guess what? All those countries have different organizations you have to get your money from, and if you don’t get it, it goes to the major music publishers. Noticing a trend here?”
Given the fact that we’ve heard for a long time from artists about how streaming services have been screwing them for years, it’s good to see something like the Heavy Music Collective exists to help the hard working men and women that bring us metal actually get paid a fair living.
If you’re an artist and want to learn more, you should head on over to the Heavy Music Collective’s website.
